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"looksie" for look-see

look-see >> looksie

I’ve seen e-mails and chats where people say they’ll have a “looksie” at something instead of a look-see. I guess they think they’re having a “little look” at something and sticking a diminutive suffix onto the word “look”?

Re: "looksie" for look-see

Often, eggcorns replace some relatively opaque element with a more common or transparent one (e.g. arrears >> the rears, migraine >> mind grain), but this is clearly not the case here. I would predict that the connection between look and see should be just as understandable as the diminutive -ie. Furthermore, use of the diminutive and use of the slang register that look-see belongs to have similar discourse effects. In this case, there’s no reason to prefer one variant over the other. And since the usage is primarily spoken, I guess it should be no surprise that both forms occur to hearers. Very nice find.

Re: "looksie" for look-see

Although the morphemes involved are very common ones, the construction look-see is an odd one. You wouldn’t say you were going to take a listen-hear or a touch-feel or a sniff-smell. So the constructional opacity here takes the functional place of the lexical opacity of the other cases you cite, Chad.

Or at least so it seems to me.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-08-15 22:36:51)

*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

Re: "looksie" for look-see

DavidTuggy wrote:

Although the morphemes involved are very common ones, the construction look-see is an odd one. You wouldn’t say you were going to take a listen-hear or a touch-feel. So the constructional opacity here takes the functional place of the lexical opacity of the other cases you cite, Chad.

Yes, you’re right, the construction look-see is odd, and far from transparent to one who isn’t already familiar with it.

On the other hand, you don’t get diminutives with sense words any more than you get this odd sort of semantic reduplication. You wouldn’t take a listensie nor a hearsie any more than you’d take a listen-hear. In addition, a smelly (meaning “a smelly object, especially a diaper”) and the adjective touchy each mean something quite different, as does touchy-feely.

So my ”[not] relatively opaque” observation may have to be revised. But I think I’ll stand by the conjecture that “there’s no reason to prefer one variant over the other.”

Re: "looksie" for look-see

nilep wrote:

You wouldn’t take a listensie nor a hearsie any more than you’d take a listen-hear. In addition, a smelly (meaning “a smelly object, especially a diaper”) and the adjective touchy each mean something quite different, as does touchy-feely.

Re: "looksie" for look-see

(Moving sale):
VHS player 800
crock pot 200
blender 200
oil paintings
and much more… COME OUT FOR A LOOKSIE.
.
(Prices are in pesos, btw: about 20 to the dollar.) Anyway, I’m pretty sure the author (a friend of mine) was not doing it on purpose.

*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

Re: "looksie" for look-see

nilep wrote:

On the other hand, you don’t get diminutives with sense words any more than you get this odd sort of semantic reduplication. You wouldn’t take a listensie nor a hearsie any more than you’d take a listen-hear. In addition, a smelly (meaning “a smelly object, especially a diaper”) and the adjective touchy each mean something quite different, as does touchy-feely.

Don’t know why I didn’t latch onto this fact at the time, but the nominal form a look is perfectly standard, so a looksie is accordingly more reasonable. You can’t take a listen or a hear , which would mean a * listensie or a * hearsie would require two rather than just one anomalous change in order to exist. Granted, a smell or a touch do exist, though the first (as opposed to a sniff) usually means what the odoriferant rather than the sensing entity does. But of course they don’t have a smell-see , a sniff-see, or a touch-see to kern off of.
.
I didn’t find any smellsie s, but did get two touchsie s. The first is likely to be advertent, a joke (though the looksie there may well be genuine), but the second may be the real thing. (I.e. not an eggcorn, but a kind of productive use of the eggcorn, using it as a pattern, extending it non-facetiously to cover nearby territory.)

It looks great, but I’m addicted to the feel of the Gorilla Glass 3. I’m extra careful with my phones, so I’ve never really used screen protectors. I just fell in love with the way the Gorilla Glass 3 feels and I doubt I could get the same feel from the GLAS.tR. Hopefully I’ll see one in person soon so I can have a touchsie and then maybe we’ll talk.

Similarly:

Curiously, he brings them up to his nose for a sniffsie. Yep. That’s him alright.

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2018-01-21 14:23:05)

*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .

Re: "looksie" for look-see

DavidTuggy wrote:

You can’t take a listen...

FWIW, both “take a listen” and “have a listen” are pretty common in English. “Listen” as a noun goes back at least several centuries, as mentioned here: “Scholars, however, point out that ‘listen’ has been used as a noun for several centuries now. Expressions like ‘to have a proper listen’ and ‘to be on the listen’ have been part of the English language for several hundred years.”

Re: "looksie" for look-see

OK, learned something new. I don’t remember running across it before, so I guess it’s not common in the circles I’ve listened in on. Or maybe I’m just inattentive. “Be on the listen” does sound vaguely familiar.

*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .